I am a political activist who has worked and lived in the West Bank of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. This blog chronicles my time in Palestine and also provides news and analysis about Palestine and the situation on the ground in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Saturday, February 25, 2017

We should support the Palestinians, not Israel

Dear friends,please find below my latest article for Red Flag on Netanyahu's visit to Australia and Malcolm Turnbull's sycophantic welcome of a fellow human rights abuser and war monger.in solidarity,Kim
***We should support the Palestinians, not Israel

Arriving
in Australia for a four-day diplomatic visit on Wednesday, 21 February,
Benjamin Netanyahu is the first sitting Israeli prime minister to visit
Australia.Netanyahu – who also held Israel’s prime ministership between 1996
and 1999 – is responsible for the ongoing illegal blockade of Gaza, as
well as Israel’s brutal military occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, East
Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.In 2014, he ordered Israel’s 50-day murderous assault on Gaza, which
resulted in the deaths of more than 2,250 Palestinians, including almost
1,500 civilians, one-third of whom were children. In addition, more
than 11,230 Palestinians were injured, including 3,436 children.

Despite Netanyahu’s well-documented record as a war criminal and
human rights abuser, he has been warmly welcomed by Australian prime
minister Malcolm Turnbull.

In a sycophantic comment piece published in the Australian
on the day of his arrival, Turnbull declared Israel “a miraculous
nation”, which had “flourished despite invasion, conflict and an almost
complete lack of natural resources, other than the determination and
genius of its people”.He went on to extol Australia’s support for the Zionist state, while
condemning those who sought to hold Netanyahu and Israel accountable for
war crimes against the Palestinian people. Turnbull not only condemned
the UN Security Council’s reaffirmation of the illegal nature of
Israel’s colonies on occupied Palestinian land, he also said that his
government “deplore[d] the boycott campaign designed to delegitimise the
Jewish state”.The Turnbull government’s enthusiastic welcome of a war criminal and
human rights abuser should come as no surprise. Successive Australian
governments, after all, have overseen systematic human rights abuses of
refugees and asylum seekers and implemented genocidal policies against
Indigenous people.Australia, like Israel, is a settler-colonial state, built on racism,
ethnic cleansing and inequalities that are codified in law and built
structurally into the economic, social and political system, ensuring
that the settler population is legally, socially and politically
privileged over the Indigenous population. In 2006, then Israeli
ambassador to Australia, Naftali Tamir, in an interview with Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, explained the racist nature of the settler-colonial alliance between the two countries:

“Israel and Australia are like sisters in Asia. We are in Asia
without the characteristics of Asians. We don’t have yellow skin and
slanted eyes. Asia is basically the yellow race. Australia and Israel
are not – we are basically the white race. We are on the western side of
Asia and they are on the south-eastern side.”

There is nothing “miraculous” about Israel as a nation. Since its
creation in 1948, Israel has been an openly racist state, using both
military force and legally sanctioned discrimination to impose an
apartheid system both inside the Zionist state and in the Palestinian
territories it illegally seized in 1967.According Adalah, an Israeli human rights organisation for Arab
minority rights, there are more than 50 laws that discriminate against
Israel’s non-Jewish citizens in areas such as property rights, political
activity, education, criminal procedures, employment and marriage.

In addition, Palestinians living in the West Bank, Gaza and East
Jerusalem endure a regime of more than 3,000 military regulations which
“govern” every aspect of life. These military orders, which can be
issued at the whim of a military commander, are not made public but can
affect Palestinian legal identity, education, employment, healthcare,
housing, political activity and freedom of movement.Israel was created in 1948, as Zionist militias depopulated more than
500 Palestinian Arab villages and towns, forcing more than 750,000
Palestinians to flee to neighbouring countries and internally displacing
another 150,000. The Zionist state has never ceased ethnically
cleansing Palestinians either inside Israel or in the territories it
seized in 1967.Currently in Israel’s south, more than 80,000 Palestinian Bedouin
citizens of Israel from 46 “unrecognised villages” are fighting against
Netanyahu’s attempt to ethnically cleanse them from their traditional
lands. Despite the majority of these villages being in existence prior
to 1948, the Israeli state has repeatedly denied them legal status,
excluding them from government maps and the provision of local and
national government infrastructure, such as electricity, running water,
sewage, telephone lines, as well as educational and health facilities
and services.As a result, the villages are regularly threatened with destruction.
One such village, Al-Arakib, which is home to more than 300 people, has
been demolished by the Israeli state and rebuilt by its residents more
than 100 times, while the village of Umm al-Hiran is currently fighting
Israel’s attempt to raze it to the ground in order to establish a
Jewish-only township in its place.Earlier this month, the Israeli parliament approved the “Validation
Law”. The law, backed by Netanyahu, allows the Israeli state to
expropriate private Palestinian lands in the Occupied West Bank for the
construction of illegal Israeli colonies. The law is in violation of
both international law and the UN Security Council Resolution passed on
23 December, the same resolution condemned by Turnbull in the Australian.By condemning both the UN Security Council Resolution and the
Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign, Turnbull has
made it clear that he has no interest in upholding Palestinian rights,
international law or supporting a just peace in the Middle East.

Nakba Keys

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About Me

I am an activist who, at different times over several years, has lived and worked as a international volunteer in the West Bank of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. This blog is an account of my time in Palestine and also carries original news, comment and analysis (as well as reprints) on Palestine. Live from Occupied Palestine campaigns for an end to Israeli apartheid and the brutal illegal occupation of the Palestinian people. You are welcome to reprint any material from this blog authored by Kim, however, please acknowledge the author and the blog website